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Date:Thursday, May 7, 2015

Time:Membership Social at 7:30Program at 8:00 p.m.

Location: Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Fahm St. (behind the Visitor's Center) Directions and MapAccess: Open to the public and free for members, students and accompanying family members, educators and active military and their dependents. $10.00 charge for non-members.

Dr. Yale Ferguson

One obvious characteristic of world affairs today is rapid—possibly accelerating-- change. Only a few years ago the European Union had to cope with the potential collapse of the Euro. Turkey had experienced an amazing economic boom and appeared to have successfully transitioned from an era of secular military rule to a relatively stable elected government led by the moderately Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party and its broadly popular Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Middle East was in the relatively optimistic throes of the “Arab Spring.” Today, however, the context has changed yet again. The EU, Turkey, the Middle East, and wider global trends—all are substantially different. Formal negotiations about Turkey’s possible accession to full EU membership started in 2005 and immediately encountered serious roadblocks. These included concerns about the compatibility of Turkish Muslim migration with European culture, the future of a divided Greek/Turkish Cyprus, the status of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority, and violations of political freedom and human rights by the Erdogan government.

This talk traces the rapid evolution of each of these issues and Turkey’s role as an “indispensible” but difficult NATO ally in the context of a Middle East that has transitioned from hopes for reform to virtual regional system collapse.

Yale H. Ferguson, is Professorial Fellow in the Rutgers University graduate Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University-Newark and Emeritus Professor of Global and International Affairs. Previously he was Professor II (highest rank at Rutgers) of Political Science and from 2002-08 was Co-Director of the Division of Global Affairs. He also is Honorary Professor at the University of Salzburg (Austria). He received his B.A. from Trinity University (San Antonio) and Ph.D. from Columbia, and joined the Rutgers faculty in 1966. Dr. Ferguson’ publications include 12 books and over 60 book chapters and articles. Books with frequent co-author Richard W. Mansbach are Globalization: The Return of Borders to a Borderless World?; A World of Polities; Remapping Global Politics; The Elusive Quest Continues; Polities: Authority, Identities, and Change; The Elusive Quest; The State, Conceptual Chaos, and the Future of International Relations Theory; and The Web of World Politics. Others are On the Cutting Edge of Globalization (with James N. Rosenau, David C. Earnest, and Ole R. Holsti); Political Space (with R. J. Barry Jones); Continuing Issues in Global Politics (with Walter Weiker); and Contemporary Inter-American Relations. In recent years Dr. Ferguson has been working, in part, on “rising powers” in global politics: the politics and economics of China-U.S. monetary relations; Turkey and the European Union; and the United States, NATO, and Ukraine. He and Mansbach are also writing a sequel to Polities, with the working title of Preinternational Polities: Political Evolution in the Ancient Mediterranean. The International Studies Association-Northeast in 2011 established the annual Yale H. Ferguson Award to “recognize the book that most advances... international studies as a pluralist discipline.” In 1999 Dr. Ferguson was honored with the Rutgers University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research. He is an elected member of Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe) and serves on its Social Science Section Committee as Political Science Liaison. He has also been elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (three times), the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and the University of Padova (Italy), as well as Fulbright Professor at Salzburg. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. From 2005-2013 Dr. Ferguson served on the editorial advisory board of Global Governance; from 2002-2010, on the editorial advisory board for International Studies Review; from 1999-2003, on the editorial advisory board of International Studies Quarterly; and from 1995-2000, on the international advisory board of the European Journal of International Relations.

Sponsor of this Month’s Program - HunterMacLean

This program is being sponsored by HunterMaclean, the largest law firm in the state of Georgia outside of Atlanta. HunterMaclean represents a wide variety of companies and individuals throughout Georgia, South Carolina, the Southeast and the United States. We appreciate its support!

Upcoming Programs

This will be the last program of our 2014 - 2015 season. Have a great summer, and we'll see you for our kick-off program in September.